Posted
by
timothy
on Friday April 20, 2012 @11:43PM
from the defeat-the-zoloftians dept.

New submitter sirlark writes "'Researchers at the University of Auckland tested an interactive 3D fantasy game called Sparx on a 94 youngsters diagnosed with depression whose average age was 15 and a half. Sparx invites a user to take on a series of seven challenges over four to seven weeks in which an avatar has to learn to deal with anger and hurt feelings and swap negative thoughts for helpful ones. Used for three months, Sparx was at least as effective as face-to-face conventional counselling, according to several depression rating scales. In addition, 44% of the Sparx group who carried out at least four of the seven challenges recovered completely. In the conventional treatment group, only 26% recovered fully.' One has to wonder if it's Sparx specifically — or gaming in general — that provides the most benefit, given that most of the symptoms of depression relate to a feeling of being unable to influence one's environment (powerlessness, helplessness, ennui, etc) and games are specifically designed to make one feel powerful but challenged (if they hit the sweet spot)."

" One has to wonder if it's Sparx specifically — or gaming in general — that provides the most benefit, given that most of the symptoms of depression relate to a feeling of being unable to influence one's environment (powerlessness, helplessness, ennui, etc) and games are specifically designed to make one feel powerful but challenged (if they hit the sweet spot)."

The thing a lot of people especially in the age group tested lack are the emotional tools to deal with normal feelings such as anger and depression. One on one counseling helps the patient build those tools and if the game is designed with that in mind then yes it's Sparx not all games. If it were all video games that made a person feel empowered then I really doubt EMO would have ever been "invented".

"The study found no significant differences between the therapies; however, the two psychotherapies were slightly less effective than imipramine but more effective than placebo. A meta-analysis of four studies, which included 169 patients with major depression, showed similar results for tricyclic antidepressants and CBT."

Now when they say placebo, they actually mean sugar pill. It's well known now that medication doesn't outperform placebo on most forms of depression so saying CBT is as good as that is a l

Depression can't be cured. It can be treated, very effectively, and the outcome will last a long time. But once you've had a depressive episode, you are more likely to have another. The longer and more severe the symptoms, the more likely you are to have a recurrance. Whatever it is that triggers depression can be abated, but it weakens the psychological fabric of the person it afflicts, permanently.

I don't know why this is, or the underlying mechanic. There are many studies out that identify variances in neural activity and neurotransmitter levels that are associated with people having a depressive episode; It has a distinct pathology and has definate biological markers, unlike most personality disorders (as a contrast). But there is scant data on what differences persist in the brain post-recovery... only a marked increase in the odds of relapse.

In that respect, it is much like chicken pox. If you've had it, the virus remains in your body, and for 80% of the population, after the acute infection, there are no further symptoms for the rest of their life. But for some, complications arise in the form of shingles. Depression is like that as well, but without the pathogen -- once you've had it, something is changed in you, forever.

Apply frustration,anxiety,hopelessness,despair,long period of unemployment or any other negative to a sane rational person for a length of time and you will get the end result: depression.
The length varies but the result is the same.

No, that's not true. I know that that message is out there -- because I had a therapist who said to me what you just said to me. But my therapist was wrong.

I survived severe depression that I experienced from about 11-19. For reference, I am 34 today. What helped me the most was journaling, journaling, journaling, re-evaluating my self-talk on a minute second by second basis, focusing on love, and a powerful willingness to recognize that the entire world can be wrong about things, and I don't need to le

Right on. Thanks. For me it's the continuing hobby of trying to become the human I'd like to live as, which requires the examination and changing of perception, reaction, thinking and doing. A "fun" job, and a good toolkit helps.

Some depression is the result of lack of vitamin D3. Spend most of your time indoors, never go out in the sunshine between 10 AM and 2 PM (the only time when you get vitamin D from sunlight), cover most of your body when you *are* out, and slather your skin with sunscreen at the beach. Oh, and the RDA was set abnormally low when it was first set. Take 8,000 IU of D3 for a week and see if you get better. You can say that it's the dead-end job, more likely it's the job keeping you indoors.

Some depression is the result of lack of iodine. Iodine is almost absent from the modern diet. Salt used in commercial products has none (iodized costs more), and bread whiteners which used to be Iodine are now mostly Bromine. The Japanese get lots of iodine in their diet and have much less incidence of depression. Take some Kelp pills for a week and see if you get better. Or, you can go to a professional and learn to manage the symptoms.

Some depression is the result of lack of Thyroid activity. No one knows what causes this (at the moment), but by some accounts 40% of depression can be cured by taking thyroid supplements. This has to be done with a doctor and lab tests, but thyroid extracts are available over the counter and could be taken for a week - see if it makes you feel better. Or, you can try the prescription "we've got it this time for sure!" antidepressant medicine that's in vogue this year.

Some depression is caused by lack of sleep, which is itself caused by allergies. Get a Xylitol nasal spray and use it every 10 minutes for an hour, or until your sinuses are clear, and see if this helps. Or change your mattress if you're waking up sore or with back pain. Or otherwise change your sleeping arrangements to maximize your rest.

Each of these is cheap and could be considered a $20 experiment - if it works, great! If it doesn't, you're out $20 so no big deal.

The "like a virus remains in your body" is fatalistic reasoning - it's an excuse to give up looking.

Another possible explanation is that Depression is a resource depletion disease, which can be cured by building up stores of that resource.

Nota Bene: There is more than one type of depression. There is more than one cause of depression.

I'm still a bit skeptic about this D3 buzz lately. I think the biggest thing cheering you up when being outside is all the direct impact to your senses: feeling the warmth of the sun, looking ants marching and enjoying spare ribs and beer with your mates. I myself live in Finland though, so without doubt I would probably still get some benefits from vitamin D.

Well, we who have quite the time to adapt genetically to the lack of sun for half of the year, I guess we suffer less from a lack of D3 than people with ancestry that is mostly from around equator, where the day night cycle is quite stable compared to our yearly changes going from permanet night to permanet darkness.

- "In addition, 44% of the Sparx group who carried out at least four of the seven challenges recovered completely."- "In the conventional treatment group, only 26% recovered fully."

This seems to indicate high effectiveness of the Sparx treatment, yet it actually tells us absolutely nothing. The critically missing data is how many of the Sparx group completed four or more challenges. If it was 1%, them the overall effectiveness of Sparx may be as low as 0.44% and vastly lower than conventional treatment. If it was 100%, then Sparx has a 44% success rate and is vastly better than conventional treatment.

Either someone is intentionally lying here (remember, these people are psychologists and know how to do it) or the reporter is a nil-whit without a clue on how to report statistics.

The article itself, but not the second-hand news release, contains the information you want:

Adherence rates

Eighty out of 94 young people who were allocated to SPARX returned questionnaires reporting number of modules completed. Adherence rates for SPARX were good, with 69 (86%) of participants allocated to SPARX completing at least four modules, 48 (60%) completing all seven modules, and 50 (62%) completing most or all of the homework challenges set.

This seems to indicate high effectiveness of the Sparx treatment, yet it actually tells us absolutely nothing. The critically missing data is how many of the Sparx group completed four or more challenges. If it was 1%, them the overall effectiveness of Sparx may be as low as 0.44% and vastly lower than conventional treatment. If it was 100%, then Sparx has a 44% success rate and is vastly better than conventional treatment.

Only if you also adjust the conventional treatment group's statistics to reflect the recovery rate of those who only took half the course of treatment.

Either someone is intentionally lying here (remember, these people are psychologists and know how to do it)

Are you serious? Your sophisticated analysis is based on the assumption that psychologists are manipulative liars? Is there anything you feel you need to have a basis for stating, or do you just fabricate (or repeat) propaganda and string it together as needed?

Either someone is intentionally lying here (remember, these people are psychologists and know how to do it)

Are you serious? Your sophisticated analysis is based on the assumption that psychologists are manipulative liars? Is there anything you feel you need to have a basis for stating, or do you just fabricate (or repeat) propaganda and string it together as needed?

It's based on the fact that many researchers, or at least people reporting research to the media, will play games with statistics to make new research seem more effective or revolutionary than they already are. The concern that GP brings up is not trivial - it is a serious flaw not to have stated that in the relative completion rates of the two treatment methods in the article because this is a very easy way to mislead readers about the results. The researchers did address this is their paper, but as usua

It has been observed through twenty something years of firsthand experimentation with computer games that they do in fact offer the chance to deal some virtual destruction, which brings with it an immense sense of satisfaction....and these assholes needed how much money to come to the same conclusion!?

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See

Most of the objections raised in the comments above are answered in the article, which looks to me to be about as high quality as is possible given the differences between the treatments used. Making accusations of "lying" before you have read the full article is unethical.

The main weakness pointed out by the authors was that the compliance with the treatment protocols was reported by the adolescent participants, not by the machines or the professionals providing the treatment. Another was that some 13% of the participants who were supposed to receive treatment as usual were merely put on waiting lists, although that may be treatment as usual in some places; but the real kicker here was that excluding them made the treatment as usual even less effective! There have been plenty of previous studies comparing treatment with non-treatment that find treatment more effective, but testing treatments for depression is very tricky because pretty much anything is beneficial, even telling people they are taking part in an experiment and then doing nothing else, but this article reports “[w]e have carried out two small studies of computerised interventions for depressive symptoms; one showed a significant effect compared with placebo and the other was significantly more effective than a waitlist control.”

I know it is futile to ask people to read an article before they comment on it, and I know it is equally futile to ask people who submit articles such as this to post links to original articles instead of second or third sources, but here goes: If you are submitting an article about an article in a scientific journal, please include a link to the original article in the original journal instead of a newspaper article based on a press release announcing the publication of the article. Thank you. And if you are drinking from the Firehose and come across something like this, at least vote it down, and better yet, submit a better article to replace it.

The thing about many problems of the mind is that there are many different reasons a person could have them, and thus different treatments can work on different people. For a number of issues you find that drugs, therapy, etc all have some success, and there is a fair bit of non-overlap (as in one failed, but another succeeded with the same person).

So I could well see a game based therapy working for some people, but not for others.

I know it is futile to ask people to read an article before they comment on it, and I know it is equally futile to ask people who submit articles such as this to post links to original articles instead of second or third sources

I don't believe it's futile.

If you are submitting an article about an article in a scientific journal, please include a link to the original article in the original journal instead of a newspaper article based on a press release announcing the publication of the article.

If I were submitting an article about an article in a scientific journal to slashdot, it wouldn't occur to me to look for (or follow) a link to the original article. Whenever I search for information on a topic online and there is a link in the search results to an article in a scientific journal, that article is almost always behind a paywall. Even more frustrating, it's usually set up as a tease so that it *looks* like it's a link to the full article but turns out to be a page

No, seriously. Reading about something like that is ultra-cool, especially since I now have something to point people towards who are trapped in the "computer games are evil and make you want to go out and shoot people" mindset - but only actually seing the thing with your own eyes is for real.

especially since I now have something to point people towards who are trapped in the "computer games are evil and make you want to go out and shoot people" mindset

I think you're putting too much faith in them. No matter what you show them, they're probably going to continue to believe that video games are evil, porn is evil, that both hurt kids, etc. Even if it's all nonsense.

I put trust in me being quite convincing if I have the evidence to support my arguments. That trust isn't baseless, I've basically convinced people of my POV as a job for a couple of years. And one thing I learnt is that argument alone is very weak compared to being able to having something to show.

That's why newspapers print fancy statistics next to complicated things. Most readers will basically blank out after the second complicated word, but a graph going visible in a particular direction is incredibly

That trust isn't baseless, I've basically convinced people of my POV as a job for a couple of years.

I was more so referring to religious family organizations who think that things like video games are the devil. No matter how many studies you give them, I'm sure they'd point to a (probably invalid) study that confirms their own views. They're the hardest ones to convince.

I'm not sure if that "showing" part works with porn, though.

That's the more difficult one. With the amount of anti-sex nonsense in America, accurate studies probably cannot easily be performed to begin with.

Agreed, and I probably wouldn't waste my time on them, except for some ridicule. I do think that humour is the best weapon against religion, and we need to ridicule it at every opportunity.

That's the more difficult one. With the amount of anti-sex nonsense in America, accurate studies probably cannot easily be performed to begin with.

Especially on children. Then again, it also means there are no studies to confirm it. Though, honestly, I do think that porn does have a negative effect on children and teenagers. Not because of the sex, but because the porn sex isn't anything like actual sex. More sexual openness and a more realistic depiction of it woul

Yeah, but it's like video games: it's as simple as being able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. If they can't figure it out on their own, then their parents can simply tell them. It's not actually such a big hurdle to overcome. The younger ones probably wouldn't be interested, anyway.

Now, I played a fair amount of computer games in my life, and as far as I could tell, they all worked along those lines. They gave you a challenge, they gave you an obstacle to overcome, they gave you anger and hurt emotions to deal with (if for no other reason than you dying at the same boss for the n-th time) and a reward when you overcame it, rewarding you for the "helpful thought" that you bit the bullet and pushed through.

It is NOT gaming in general. Gaming as a hobby, especially with a focus on challenge, encourages isolation, which is the kiss of death for mental health. The fact that a person is more powerful in games than the world isn't helpful either. At best it causes one to look behind the curtain too much; more commonly it simply generates a psychological dependence on escapism.

I'm using a bunch of "psychobabble" here, but I should be clear: my years of experience are not in practice and study of the field. This happened to me, and I've known several others who got it worse. To be even clearer, I'm not saying that games are bad for you. In my best health, I enjoy them much more, in fact. Having a life in balance allows me to take on games that require more effort and which are deeper as works of art. But they are not good medicine unless they're made that way.

A further insight as a sort of... tenured mental patient: if the game teaches people to "replace thoughts," it's teaching Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. While that method has seen some success, it's mainly because most cases of depression frankly deal with first world problems that people need to bootstrap themselves out of. People with physiologically-rooted cases, those who have experienced severe trauma, and those who see the man behind the curtain will see better long-term gains from a newer approach: Acceptance and Committment Therapy. Luckily, there's already a game for that! A significant portion of ACT is the practice of mindfulness and meditation. Bejeweled 3's meditation mode is surprisingly effective for a silly gimmick.:p

There have been multiple studies about how excessive gaming can lead to depression, and even a behavioral addiction. While I'm sure that taking this position is going to be massively unpopular among the/. crowd, I've experienced both the depressive and addictive aspect of video games, myself. Of course, I still love gaming, but I've found that if I don't exert some control over how much I play, my depression gets worse, and yes, I do get addicted (complete with a sort of emotional "withdrawal" when I stop playing).

That being said, it may well be the nature of the games I play: mostly ultra-violent FPS games, and a few RPGs (Skyrim, etc.). While it's surely also unpopular to remind people about the article on/. a while back about such games "turning-off" certain parts of the brain (especially the area that more-or-less monitors whether our actions are considered "acceptable;" I don't remember the name for it), I'll point the phenomenon out, anyway. Notably, other parts of the brain are stimulated in much the opposite way (motor cortex, etc.), and can find benefit therein. (Link contains a good info-graphic.)http://ansonalex.com/infographics/effect-video-games-brain/ [ansonalex.com]

Don't take this as me saying "video games are evil," because I don't believe that. Still, misuse can be a problem and can actually cause episodes of depression, as I've experienced, myself.

These researchers have probably hit on something important, and it would seem that the nature of the game plays a major role in how it affects a person. Congrats to them for being sensible about studying these things (rather than basing their findings on ideology). I should probably point out that this article deals only with comparison to traditional "talk therapy"--which not everyone finds helpful (and whose efficacy is extremely dependent on who's doing it)--and that this probably isn't dealing with severe, chemical depression, so much as socially-induced depression (which is certainly just as valid; it's simply different). Still, that the program was this helpful is quite remarkable.

Playing WoW when I was depressed was the most helpful thin, actually. I really didn't even want to talk to other people. Talking about it would have just made me feel worse and hopeless. The reward feeback system in the game made me feel good about myself, as I was able to achieve goals, play with friends, help newbies out, and win loot. I still worked, tried to be social, and got a little exercise, so I don't think it should be taken to the extreme like in South Park.

I can totally relate to that. Any sufficiently challenging game, with a decent reward system, and "feel good about yourself" moments would do.

But then comes times like this year, when you have lots of work to do, a senior project to finish by a very short deadline, a shitty boss, and add one or two nasty incidents, and you suddenly find yourself lacking the time to get into any video game, but quite to the contrary, you start feeling guilty when playing instead of working on the project, and the depression

I've had it quite often myself, and I don't see why goodmanj got modded down for his statement. In fact for the longest time I blamed video games for making me more depressed, when it was actually the act of ceasing to play them that did so. Whoever wrote TFA really hit the nail on the head...at least for my case. It's all about feeling in control.

Problem is, to say "depression" is like saying "autism" or "cancer". So many varieties that no one solution works for all of them.

What's worked on mine is simple: I keep busy with regular projects, and give myself at least the illusion of control and accomplishment. May as well feel like I'm doing something while I'm hanging around.

You seem to be thinking of mild depression or even subclinical sadness. This is quite common, as psychiatric disorders tend to be an exaggeration of normal things that everyone feels, so it's easy to underestimate them. You also rarely see them, as holding a job and going out requires a fair degree of psychological health. The last hundred years or so of medical research specifically tests for effectiveness VS a placebo, so it's not like people are just shooting in the dark here. (To throw you a bone, medications don't seem to be very effective against mild depression.) Most of the people I've talked to keep struggling with depression throughout their life and getting treatment means getting better in weeks/months rather than years.

Also, stop getting your medical knowledge from TV, it's wrong. The vast majority of psychologists don't do the couch thing anymore. Plus, CBT (the most common type) isn't really talking about one's feelings at length. If I remember my history right, that sort of therapy died out as psychology progressed beyond Freud. There are likely a few psychologists that still do it, but they cater to rich people with similar misconceptions (it requires almost weekly visits for years before you see significant results -- assuming the psychologist doesn't incorporate newer forms of therapy).

To throw you a bone, medications don't seem to be very effective against mild depression.

Considering that SSRIs/SNRIs have a 60-70% incidence of causing sexual side effects (reduced libido, reduced sensation, reduced ability to reach orgasm) but are the most frequently prescribed class of antidepressant, it's not surprising. The side effects are enough to make anyone stay mildly depressed.

You seem to be thinking of mild depression or even subclinical sadness

No, counseling is equally ineffective against major depression.

The last hundred years or so of medical research specifically tests for effectiveness VS a placebo, so it's not like people are just shooting in the dark here. (To throw you a bone, medications don't seem to be very effective against mild depression.)

The best supported counseling method, CBT, is no better than placebo for depression. Consider this metaanalysis [nih.gov] Particularly

Anyone who lists "euphoria" under "undesirable effects" is being intellectually dishonest. The reason ketamine is low on the list of drugs to treat depression with is puritanical bigotry connected to the war on drug users.

Also, I don't use ketamine. I'm not willing to get addicted and withdraw from half a dozen different drugs before a doctor finally does the right thing and prescribes a safe and effective treament instead of the politically correct treatment.

We're not talking about "puritanical bigotry" or "politically correct" here. However, it looks like we might need to talk about your prejudices and unwillingness to accept inconvenient facts.

BTW, "euphoria" doesn't mean ''happy"; it means "*excessive or uncontrolled* feelings of happiness". And this can make you unable to concentrate or even careless to the point of doing something stupid or even dangerous. As someone who occasionally suffers from violent mood swings, I don't desire to be excessively or unc

CBT -- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is essentially mind hacking. Suppose you're afraid of snakes. In the old-style Freudian therapy you and your analyst would try to figure out how your childhood development led to that phobia. The CBT therapist isn't interested in where the phobia comes from, he's focused on how it works. He'll help you identify the unspoken assumptions and distorted thinking (that the cognitive part) that maintain your fear of snakes, then encourages you to put those ideas to the test by actually getting firsthand experience handling them (that's the behavioral part).

So the CBT approach is to break a mental problem down to its component assumptions and put each of those assumptions to an empirical test.

There's a similar therapy called "ACT" (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). If your problem is that you think life sucks, a CBT therapist will approach that belief as a fallacy to be disproven. An ACT therapist would regard that feeling as part of the human condition that can't be banished, and focus on helping you learn to do rewarding and meaningful things despite feeling that way.

For my money, this video game works as well as conventional counseling because conventional counseling doesn't work. People get better, sure, but they get better on their own. Time, improving life circumstances, and new friends are what end depression, not lying on a couch talking about your feelings.

Do you have anything to back this up, or are you making it up... or just repeating cynical ignorance that I've heard 1,000 times before? The problem with repeating cynical ignorance is that you can spread misinformation to people who really need it. Next is anecdotal speculation about vaccine effectiveness?

I've been diagnosed with recurring depression and there is quite a lot of that in my family line (father is currently medicated after years long serious depression, etc.). There have been times I've been depressed and not went for treatment and there have been times I've went to a therapist... and there is a world of difference. Of course, depression affects individuals in different ways so everything I say might not apply to everyone but I'll try to speak on a relatively general level.

First of all... "Time, improving life circumstances, and new friends are what end depression"... Those aren't the kind of things that happen during a depression! When you can't force yourself to get into the job (a job you normally love, really want to keep, etc.) in time (or at all) for months and even if you get in, you can't concentrate enough to do anything complex (e.g., coding) efficiently... When you don't feel any interest to meet friends, girlfriend, etc... there's pretty high chance of getting fired, failing your classes, destroying your relationships, etc. which will make the depression deeper. Time might take care of it but if you allow that situation to go on for months first (untreated, my depression usually lasts about 4-5 months), you've probably nearly ruined your life first (been there, done that).

So, if you're depressed, not getting treatment is usually stupid. There are always medications but studies have shown that if you treat your depression with drugs, you're likely to get depressed again sooner and the next depression is likely to be deeper... until the medicines don't have enough effect anymore.

As for what happens in therapy... I've been to quite a few sessions and I've never had to talk about my childhood and whatnot. There are quite a few schools of therapy but Freudian, Jungian, etc. exist only in movies and as fashionable things to try out for the rich people. The therapist I usually go to helps me do damage control: Helps me take the steps that prevent me from ruining my life (Talk with my boss about my need to work at a reduced capacity for a while instead of me just not showing up for work half the time, etc.) at first and then helps me claw my way out of the pit (prioritize the massive bulk of tasks that seem impossible to handle, get small successes on which to build, etc.), helps me find the things that deepen my depression and find ways to solve them (Your home is filthy? You don't think you're going to lose your job immediately? Well, get a cleaner to visit it once a week until you're up and going again!... type of practical solutions)... Nothing magic but just things that you can't get done without help if you're depressed.

"There are always medications but studies have shown that if you treat your depression with drugs, you're likely to get depressed again sooner and the next depression is likely to be deeper... until the medicines don't have enough effect anymore."

You know some of us with actual mental illness really get our knickers in a twist when people start saying we don't need our medicines we just need to Try REALLLLLLLY hard and we'll get better.
If having a sucky life makes you depressed then you aren't mentally ill, you just have a sucky life, it's normal to be depressed then, heck if you are on the proper medication for chronic depression you should be depressed when your life sucks. If all you need is help, love, reassurance and planning to get out of your problem then more power to you. When you have a stable job, loving spouse, safe clean home and pleasant relations with your extended family and you sleep all day because you think if you get up you are liable to slit your wrists that is mental illness.
Anyway what you have and what I have are two very different diseases that happen to share a name, sometimes telling one from the other is difficult so everyone owes it to themselves to explore all the options for treatment. That being said don't call my drugs dangerous and ineffective and I won't call your therapy hippie bullcrap ok?

I think you're reading a little too much into what F69631 said. I read it as, "If you treat yourself (only) with drugs...". And what he says about about drugs tending to lose their efficacy over time (due to building up tolerance) is perfectly true. I don't think he's saying, "Don't use drugs at all", and I also think you are being unnecessarily defensive, since he doesn't say anything about drugs being "dangerous and ineffective".

If you read what he said *in context*, he also says that *his depression is not necessarily exactly the same as other people's*. The rest of his post suggests that he is also talking to a large extent about people who seem to think they can just take a magic pill and their problems will go away. Not to mention those people who tell someone suffering from depression, "Oh, you just take take a pill for that." (Maybe you've never seen ads for various meds that imply that this is the case on TV, in magazines, etc.? I'm pretty sure that I have.) And he goes to imply that he thinks that therapy/consultation should always be a part of treatment.

And, as someone who's been there himself, I happen to agree with him.

ExecSummary: He doesn't say (IMNSHO), "Don't do meds at all"; he says, "Don't rely on meds to the exclusion of anything else".

Anyway what you have and what I have are two very different diseases that happen to share a name, sometimes telling one from the other is difficult so everyone owes it to themselves to explore all the options for treatment. That being said don't call my drugs dangerous and ineffective and I won't call your therapy hippie bullcrap ok?

Actually, I think they're similar diseases that neither of you fully understand (which is fair enough, because nobody really understands them)... I am not a psychologist, but I have been through severe depression with suicidal tendencies. My psych at the time put it best... therapy on its own will work, some of the time. Meds on their own will work, some of the time. For best results, you need to combine them.

What I found from experience was that SSRI's took the edge off my feelings. They didn't make them d

Anyway what you have and what I have are two very different diseases that happen to share a name, sometimes telling one from the other is difficult so everyone owes it to themselves to explore all the options for treatment. That being said don't call my drugs dangerous and ineffective and I won't call your therapy hippie bullcrap ok?

Actually, I think they're similar diseases that neither of you fully understand (which is fair enough, because nobody really understands them)... I am not a psychologist, but I have been through severe depression with suicidal tendencies. My psych at the time put it best... therapy on its own will work, some of the time. Meds on their own will work, some of the time. For best results, you need to combine them.

What I found from experience was that SSRI's took the edge off my feelings. They didn't make them disappear, but they made them bearable so that I could work on what the real problem was. There was a neurochemical imbalance: my brain was not producing enough seratonin. But blocking the reuptake of that neurotransmitter, which is how most anti-depressants work, didn't do anything to address the issue that was causing my problems in the first place. What it *did* do was make it so that I could see the exit, but I still had to work on getting there. What I found when I reached that goal was that I didn't need the medications any more, and was able to stop taking the SSRI medication. It's now been 5 years since I stopped taking anti-depressants, and 3 years since I stopped seeing a psychologist on a regular basis, and I have not had a single relapse.

Now, I'm not saying that you don't need it. I'm not saying you'll necessarily reach a point where you don't need it... there could be something weird with the way your brain is wired, such that going off the meds is not an option. But I'm also not saying that the person for whom pure therapy works is full of it. Mental health, and how the psyche and physical brain interact, is something we're only just beginning to understand. We've barely scratched the surface, and what we're realizing is that it's easily the most complicated field of medicine that exists. In my case, there was an elephant in the room that I was afraid to address, and it is what was causing my depression. There may be a similar issue going on for the both of you, and I don't think either of you should discount what's working for the other.

... for the chemical imbalance theory that created a $100bn industry.

Anyway, there are plenty of people who understand mental health decently. We're just outnumbered about 10 to 1 by people who don't have a clue.

It might be the most complicated field but the main problem is that it's almost impossible to test... so accurate models are chanced upon more than anything.

Depression is a bitch and if meds was the best help available to you, it's even more impressive to get past it. Respect.

Hey, I have a great life, at least when you look at it from the outside. Incredibly well paying job (actually, my dream job), quite a few people who worry about me (aka "friends"), and yet getting up in the morning every day is a fight and a half (and not only 'cause I couldn't sleep half the night) and if I had the choice I would rather just stay in bed for a few days. Or weeks. Or years. Which of course doesn't make me feel any better either.

If having a sucky life makes you depressed then you aren't mentally ill, you just have a sucky life, it's normal to be depressed then...

This. What a lot of people call "depression" is really the result of cowardice; they need to face making some change(s) but instead simply live in denial and become hopeless. Real depression isn't circumstantial -- if the idea of winning the lottery cheers you up,you're probably not actually depressed.

Well, having looked through the literature in the past I would agree that "conventional" counselling isn't perhaps as effective as people make out. CBT is the most common and probably attracts attention and resources because it is the most common... not because it is particularly effective. But there are plenty of other forms of counselling, and the key is selecting the approach that fits the client, the symptoms and available pharmacological inteventions. And there are approaches that do involve people tal

Getting better with a depression is quite impossible. For a simple reason: A depression is self fueling. They don't get better by themselves, they get worse. Usually by the time someone finally decides that it's time to see a doctor they're already so deep in the hole that digging out becomes a time consuming process.

A depression isn't just a mood swing that passes. Your loved one leaves you and you are heartbroken. That's no depression. It can lead to one, b

Most 'ordinary' depression is simply the way the brain copes with changes in circumstances and the resulting changes in the brain's model of reality. The natural course of regular depression is about 8 weeks, which is why most 'treatments' are effective after about 6 weeks (from time of diagnosis), and the only actual benefit they have, if any, is the placebo effect of medication side effects or the ego boost of having a therapist pay attention.

For my money, this video game works as well as conventional counseling because conventional counseling doesn't work.

Exactly right. Try finding a counseler who can produce clinical data showing a statistically significant effect of their tretament with appropriate placebo controls. They get pretty upset when you start asking about confidence intervals.

Actually, depression and autism are useful for the species-as-a-whole. Sure, severe depression can be crippling -- but some depression is good for society. The pessimists are the ones who tend to see what's going to go wrong, problems with ideas. Worrying about every little thing, to a degree, means every little thing won't go wrong (some still will, but compare to cheery optimists who don't take time to prepare for unfortunate eventualities).

Autism is also a benefit to society, to a degree. Sure, it can be severe, and that's not helpful -- but good grief, go pick out any famous genius from the past, read up on how strange their behavior was. PROTIP: Some of our greatest advancements in knowledge and science came from the minds of people who had strange and inexplicable obsessive habits, who were not socially apt or adapt.

In short, you're pretty much an idiot lacking any understanding of the societal benefits of diversity.

These things persist in society precisely because they were useful.

Hemophilia? Not so much -- but it's rather rare, and ~1/3 of the cases of it aren't caused by genetic inheritance but rather from random gene mutation.Diabetes? Not really genetic. There can be a genetic predisposition for it, but that doesn't really CAUSE it -- just makes it more likely to happen.

We've had thousands of years "left to nature" for undesirable traits that hinder survival to be weeded out. That these traits persist should be a pretty big fucking clue to you.

What I am saying is that many of the brightest minds in history were... peculiar. They were often obsessive, and socially maladjusted. Autism isn't a yes/no thing -- it's a differentiation of brain function, which when to a great degree does constitute a disability that makes living difficult but, when to a minor degree, imparts no great burden on a person's survival but DOES tend to make them.. well, obsessive, socially maladjusted, detail-oriented. Christ, just read about Tesla for a bit and tell me

I agree that this is a severe problem. Unfortunately, the only solutions brought forward to far are completely unacceptable.

Killing people with these diseases off, is obviously unacceptable.

Preventing them from breeding is highly problematic. To give one example, there was a couple inAustria that recently had their third kid die horribly because they have a known genetic incompatibility and a very high chance of the child being horribly sick. Still, they inflicted this on a third person. There was no legal consequences of them breeding again. They did get convicted because the sickness is treatable today (not pretty), but they instead went for Homeopathy (which, predictably does nothing and the child dies in agony). Yes, even in this extreme case (and I see at least a double manslaughter here, after the first child they knew), nothing was done to prevent them from having more children. The problem are, of course, the various Eugenics programs, in particularly in the 3rd Reich.

Appealing to the insight may work with many, but there are far to many egoists out there for it to be effective.

On the other hand, humans breed like crazy, which causes far more pain, suffering and misery than the egoists that pass serious diseases down to their children. If left unchecked, the human will to reproduce is what may well kill off the human race. Only time will tell what happens. Many industrial nations are already shrinking, so some control mechanism is at work. It may well be that these sicknesses are part of that mechanism.

In the case of autism there's a quirk: "hyper-systemizing" people (i.e. potentially productive geeks) tend to have more children with autism and Asperger syndrome. This would indicate that there's a positive side to these genes that is maladaptive if taken too far.

autism, hemophilia, etc... things like this used to be very rare because people with these genes tended to not pass them down (due to lower survival rate, or in autism's case due to social stigma attached to mating with one).

Left to nature, contra-survival traits like these weed themselves out in any population, not just human. But nowadays they're being kept alive and allowed to breed wantonly, which might be admirable from a moral standpoint... but it's not doing the human gene pool any favors.

I understand that you have no idea what you are talking about. But given that, why would you choose to say the above, of all things? Why say something destructive?

Left to nature, contra-survival traits like these weed themselves out in any population

Left to nature, I wouldn't be working a shit job with shitty hours stuck inside in a noisy hot office all day dealing with a workload you'd normally assign to three people and a boss you want to push out of a high window - a boss who has no problem texting you xmas morning expecting you to fix an internet access problem in one department. Nor would I be forced to stay in that job to pay the mortgage on the house that's un

Left to nature, contra-survival traits like these weed themselves out in any population, not just human. But nowadays they're being kept alive and allowed to breed wantonly, which might be admirable from a moral standpoint... but it's not doing the human gene pool any favors.

Further to my previous answer... Why don't you tell us what makes YOU such a gift to gene pool? You arrogant twat.

Well, human society also needs its negative role models so we can tell good from evil. I mean, imagine there was no Hitler, I'm pretty sure people like our friend there could actually have a platform for their eugenic ideas because there's nowhere to point to as an argument where it leads to.

Depression usually comes with two side effects that go right in the face of your social darwinist argument: Loss of social contact and loss of sex drive. So even if you keep depressed people alive "artificially", they neither want to breed nor can find someone to breed with.

That is why I would recommend No One Lives Forever I & II as challenges filled with laughs is hard for batshit "1 million moms" types to bitch about and I dare you not to get a big old smile the first time you plant a kitty bomb and watch what happens when a bad guy finds it "Oh look, what a cute little kitty...fsst BOOM!" he he he.

Perhaps you should read the entire article instead of basing your assinine accusation on the title of a newspaper article describing a journal article which, strangely enough, contains operational definitions for both "depression" and "treatment as usual".

I actually like when people turn things upside-down, I would appreciate for them to do it more often, to better see the both sides of the issue. So indeed, in about 56% of the cases the treatment fails. Although, that's still almost two times better as the traditional treatment group (where 74% fails). That means it's still useful.